US 'serious' on climate change

The conference, chaired by Rice, is being attended by representatives fromleading industrial and emerging economies, the United Nations andEuropean Union.

Four more meetings will be held in 2008, culminating "tentatively" in a leaders' summit.

The 16 nations taking part are Australia, Britain, Brazil,Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan,South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States,which together account for more than 90 per cent of globalgreenhouse gas emissions.

Other participants are Portugal, as current EU president, and officials from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Rice pledged the aim of the Washington talks was to"accelerate the broader process under the UNFCCC".

Key talks under the UNFCCC take place in Bali, Indonesia, fromDecember 3-14, aimed at setting out a timetable for negotiations torestrict carbon gas after 2012, when current commitmentsunder Kyoto Protocol run out.

The core of any UNFCCC deal will be a mandatory cap onemissions by rich countries, a principle that Bush has fiercelyopposed since 2001.

At a UN summit on climate change on Monday, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),warned the crisis was accelerating.

Glaciers and Arctic sea ice were retreating rapidly and "majorprecipitation changes" - droughts and floods - were occurring,according to the UN's top scientific panel on climate change.

On present trends hundreds of millions of people facedworsening water scarcity as a result of glacier loss in theHimalayas, which fed key rivers in China and South Asia.